PC Now that You have played Alpha 19, What do you like or dislike?

[canadianbluebeer]

Slower progression is fine, the regular wooden club is actually useful now, for a surprisingly long time.

Stam drain for mining....  um...

3 pts in sexrex and iron tools you can pretty much mine non stop (short pauses)... steel, not so much.

stone tools, yup, easy, but takes forever to mine anything.

eating more often, that may need a little tweaking (same on stam)

Nowhere near a bad as 17.  Different from 18, oh yes.

LOVE the faceplanting of the zombies.

DO NOT LIKE:   Fat mama falling out of the ceiling right on your head.   Need Brain Bleach now!  graaaaahhh!!

(ok, the ginormouse gramma panties is a nice touch)  

 

[beHypE]

I'm looking forward to POI's having bonus loot levels. To keep them from being cheesed as hard as in A18 perhaps the bonus loot levels could scale depending on how well cleared the POI is. The game can clearly already track whether or not all of the zombies in a POI have been spawned and killed, see clear quests. So scale the loot bonus based on the clear percentage. Heck, you could even make the scale work such that the loot room containers all have a negative loot level modifier until some arbitrary percentage of the zombies have been killed and then let that loot bonus go up and hit 100% of it's assigned value once 80-90% of the zombies have been killed.

That is a very good idea! 

 

[gwensparkle]

-like the new graphics for the most part - some really nice item additions in pois!

-not sure if it's bad luck or by design but I've tried Navesgane and several RWG worlds and always start in the forest biome that is huge.  I've yet to find another biome in any of the worlds although others screenshots let me know I'd like them a lot

-the zombies seem a bit more unpredictable and I like that, more wandering and they seem to find you from further away

-not a big fan of "big jugs" Jen.  I'll be honest, I was fond of the old Jen.  lol, I thought I'd like her better until I was confronted with a close-up of her chest

-that brings me to the trader interaction.  That sudden switch to close-up will take some getting used to.  Immersion breaking for me.

-there's one zombie that keeps reminding me of Ronald McDonald, even though I think he's supposed to be inspired by something else, I'm not a fan of the ones with clownish looks, but I can't say they don't have a definite clownish creepiness to them

-the crawler zombie - the jury is still out .  I find it refreshingly creepy but the scientist in me always breaks with immersion to wonder how it stays "alive" enough to still be moving around

-not a fan of the on-screen sprites.  The info is right above on the compass!  However, I like that it's easy to edit out.

-I'm quite flexible when it comes to game mechanics (within reason)  I can see changes have been made but so far so good.

- still trying to figure out if the crafting menu is incomplete by design - even when you learn schematics some don't show up in their category

-I'm big on exploration and graphical immersion and with the exception of those pesky sprites and the trader zoom-in, alpha 19 is a step forward for me

-overall thumbs up from me

 

[FA_Q2]

It is not a reason; it's a garbage excuse and I will not waste any more time dealing with someone so dedicated to overlooking faults as to be blind to issues and time. 

If you want a comparison; how about Cube World; a Voxel game that was created in 8 years by a team of two people and spent 6 years in alpha by comparison.

It's also not a fully alterable Voxel game as of A18 when the inability to replace terrain blocks rendered that feature moot.

You also miss my point that the problem isn't that it's an Alpha; but that they're using it as a crutch to delay/deny problems while still marketing the game as playable and trying to gain new followers.  You can't have it both ways; either it's an alpha OR it's a packaged and playable game; as the versions that were sold for the console were purported to be.  I'm sick of them running back to the well of "it's an alpha" and "just mod it" instead of remaining consistent.

My comments and impressions have been related to the gameplay and the progression of changes, if you can't understand that then there's no point in you participating in anything that involves providing feedback for what people want to see in future updates or problems with the current version.

To be honest, this game is quite playable as is and was worth every penny I have spent on it if the dev team closed up shop tomorrow and never released another update.

I have more hours on it than virtually any other AAA title I own and would only place a few of them on par with 7 days, flaws and all.  The fact it remains in alpha is basically a bonus for me - the game gets updated and changes allowing me to come back after a time and enjoy it all over again.  I will never understand the anger at the dev cycle taking so long - I will be disappointed when the game goes gold as there will be no more major changes to gameplay to look forward to.

 

[mr.devolver]

Not a new thing, but I absolutely love that it takes 24 Forged Irons to craft Claw Hammer and 25 Forged Irons to craft Workbench.

 

[HungryZombie]

I agree with the combat music being over the top, especially during horde night. I feel strongly that ambience and good sound design does much better than just music. I think the sound track should just be ambience, nothing that alerts you that you're being swarmed or things of that nature. 

The trader music is also a bit annoying. Might be better if it were more faded in the background or had like a radio filter effect on it or even if it was more of a stinger - played for a brief moment and then faded out. Otherwise is just feels obnoxious when it starts playing and stays. 

Agree with this regarding the loot - it's what I was trying to explain earlier. The looting experience is dulled down to knowing what you're going to get for the most part. Finding a unique POI such as a military base or a specific factory isn't exciting, unless you decide to just save it for later because the game stage system forces you to, not because you know it might be dangerous to go in. Fun Pimps needs to work on a Risk vs. Reward system for loot. I realize that it may be difficult to create a challenging POI when we can just cheese through it potentially by towering our way to the main loot and just busting through some blocks, but that's the hard part of being a developer I think. Maybe add a stability system that prevents you from just stacking unupgraded blocks too high (I actually think this would be a good idea), surround important loot with high HP level blocks, etc. I still prefer the previous loot system to this current one. 

Why bother saving loot boxes? There are so many POI's to loot and they reset with trader quests. It don't seem like much of an issue.  You could also increase loot respawn timer if it's really troublesome.

 

[meganoth]

I'm looking forward to POI's having bonus loot levels. To keep them from being cheesed as hard as in A18 perhaps the bonus loot levels could scale depending on how well cleared the POI is. The game can clearly already track whether or not all of the zombies in a POI have been spawned and killed, see clear quests. So scale the loot bonus based on the clear percentage. Heck, you could even make the scale work such that the loot room containers all have a negative loot level modifier until some arbitrary percentage of the zombies have been killed and then let that loot bonus go up and hit 100% of it's assigned value once 80-90% of the zombies have been killed.

It isn't a bad idea. One flaw though is that potentially a stealth player could go non-cheesingly through the poi with very few kills and be punished for that. One idea the devs are considering at the moment is one (or more?) keys you find on random zombies or in random locations in the POI, which sounds at least for the stealth player to be a somewhat better solution.

 

[ZombiDweller]

Couple of things.

1. Worst thing, missions. Every day 5 missions. Just by running these missions and using vending machines you can skip half of the game elements. Crafting, food as example. By doing missions you achieve pretty much everything. Limit 5 missions every 7 days, or what ever horde interval is set.

2. Vending machines still resupply every day, making them cornucopia devices in the game.  Same here, vending machines should not be filled every day, horde interval here also.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

To be fair it's not defended by anything if you have enough frames and know where the loot is.

Shotgun Messiah Factory only appears in cities and they themselfs already have GS +100. So the factory will have GS201 if you go there on day 1. You probably won't even get through the citiy to the factory. Maybe you are lucky if it is on the edge of a city or you find just a smaller shotgun messiah shop outside a citiy.

There already are mods that prevent nerd poling (can't place frames while jumping). Maybe you could still build ramps or use ladders. But anyway, if people want to cheese, let them do that. Just imagine someone could use creative menu and cheat himself a autoshotgun without going anywhere. The goal would not be to make it absolutely impossible, but just add some reasonable risk vs reward (if not "cheating" anyway). Just imagine, i once used a gyrocopter to land on the top of a skyscraper. Currently there is no risk and no reward.

That you can skip somehow to the lootroom is a consequenze of having a fully modifiable world, however POIs could be designed in the means to make it harder. I still like that i can destory a locked door and not go the official dungeon path, that doesn't mean i dig straight to the lootroom in the basement nor nerdpoling up to a roof. Now adverstising a fully changeable world but forcing players not being able to do this in POIs is somewhat counter productive.

 

[Dracula]

People seem to fail to understand my problem with the "It's an Alpha" defense in that it is often employed IN CONJUNCTION with the "Just mod it" solution.  The two do not go hand in hand.  When the final version is released, then I will mod it to the exact esoteric way that I like to play; until then, it's "play vanilla, note changes, look into mods to improve it, scrub mods for new alpha, repeat."

It also seemed that A18 had the fewest mods of any version; I'm assuming that is due to the proximity of it to A19.

In what I was saying, I'm going to continue to criticize that there aren't multiple "classes" of zombies that can be selected at the onset because I keep having to mod out vultures, cops, and spider zombies every version.  It's also a weird disconnect to see the zombies like the businessman looking so crude next to the redone ones.

Until things stabilize, the focus is extremely zombie-oriented grind.  Turning EXP up doesn't fix this, either, as the stamina drain means that the only effective system to leveling up is to slaughter hordes until you can spend enough skill points to not be AS hindered with it.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

It also seemed that A18 had the fewest mods of any version; I'm assuming that is due to the proximity of it to A19.

Huh? I would state the opposite.

https://7daystodiemods.com/alpha-18-mods/

There are 64 pages with each 8 mods. Some of them may be redundant, but it may still not even be a complete list.

In what I was saying, I'm going to continue to criticize that there aren't multiple "classes" of zombies that can be selected at the onset because I keep having to mod out vultures, cops, and spider zombies every version.  It's also a weird disconnect to see the zombies like the businessman looking so crude next to the redone ones.

And i like vultures, cops and spiders and even demolishers. Especially these, as they give the game a variation. The other ones are all the same with just different skins and amount of hitpoints. Ultra boring.

Until things stabilize, the focus is extremely zombie-oriented grind.  Turning EXP up doesn't fix this, either, as the stamina drain means that the only effective system to leveling up is to slaughter hordes until you can spend enough skill points to not be AS hindered with it.

Building also gives a @%$*#!load of XP. Since A18 even more than any previous alpha. But the total xp gain is hard to compare, as older alphas had the LBD system which gives a completely different twist.

 

[Roland]

It's also a weird disconnect to see the zombies like the businessman looking so crude next to the redone ones.

So this statement right here is an example of what I don't get about you.

1) Is it that you just don't know that they are converting all the zombies and they only had time to get done what they did and once you realize that all the zombies in the game will be updated you'll be, "Oh, cool"? Or

2) Is it that you do you know and you just wish they would hold back such changes until it could be all implemented at once so you wouldn't have to endure playing with partly done features?

Because this is a prime example of something that is a work in progress just like the progression and because the game is in Alpha and because you purchased early access you will see things in the game just like the zombies that are in various stages of work. In Alpha 20 there will be more new zombies and fewer of the legacy ones and in Alpha 21 perhaps they will get all the rest converted and your issue with this will be solved.

So if it is the first reasonYou didn't realize they were converting them all) then I can understand your criticism that the new ones don't match well with the old ones but then the ANSWER to your criticism literally is the fact that the game is in alpha and the zombie changeover is a WIP and you are seeing it because of your backstage pass AKA early access.

If it is the second reason: (You know but you hate playing the game with partly done features) then you really didn't understand what you bought into and I highly recommend putting the game away until the notification comes that it is fully released.

If there is a third reason I am all ears.

 

[Dracula]

Huh? I would state the opposite.

https://7daystodiemods.com/alpha-18-mods/

There are 64 pages with each 8 mods. Some of them may be redundant, but it may still not even be a complete list.

And i like vultures, cops and spiders and even demolishers. Especially these, as they give the game a variation. The other ones are all the same with just different skins and amount of hitpoints. Ultra boring.

Building also gives a @%$*#!load of XP. Since A18 even more than any previous alpha. But the total xp gain is hard to compare, as older alphas had the LBD system which gives a completely different twist.

Perhaps that's a different in mods relative to play styles; I found a lot more mods that were suited for what I wanted in previous versions versus A18.

A lot of what you like seems to fly in the face of the I like to play; I enjoy it as if it's a Romero movie where taking over something like an entire mall would be possible.  Zombies smashing down my walls are ridiculous, but having a mob of 100 waiting for me outside of it after I used the forge to build a few rebar frames is a terrifying experience.  I've had to use varying mods that allow a great degree of zombie health customization to get exactly what I want; it's not easy, but it's very satisfying to do so.

So this statement right here is an example of what I don't get about you.

1) Is it that you just don't know that they are converting all the zombies and they only had time to get done what they did and once you realize that all the zombies in the game will be updated you'll be, "Oh, cool"? Or

2) Is it that you do you know and you just wish they would hold back such changes until it could be all implemented at once so you wouldn't have to endure playing with partly done features?

Because this is a prime example of something that is a work in progress just like the progression and because the game is in Alpha and because you purchased early access you will see things in the game just like the zombies that are in various stages of work. In Alpha 20 there will be more new zombies and fewer of the legacy ones and in Alpha 21 perhaps they will get all the rest converted and your issue with this will be solved.

So if it is the first reasonYou didn't realize they were converting them all) then I can understand your criticism that the new ones don't match well with the old ones but then the ANSWER to your criticism literally is the fact that the game is in alpha and the zombie changeover is a WIP and you are seeing it because of your backstage pass AKA early access.

If it is the second reason: (You know but you hate playing the game with partly done features) then you really didn't understand what you bought into and I highly recommend putting the game away until the notification comes that it is fully released.

If there is a third reason I am all ears.

To elaborate on your first point; I'm well aware that it's a progress for the zombie transition and I think it looks great; the new zombies are so much better that it makes the old ones seem jarring in that they don't look like they're from the same game.  That's not a BAD thing, as it illustrates the drastic contrast between the updates and gives me hope about the future versions.

What I'm getting at is that I hate that if I comment on a feature or how a change disrupts my play style; like the shift from the craftable blocks in A17 to A18 where the only way to get a variety of blocks was to cheat them in, then the response I get is to "get a mod that lets you craft all blocks or play with cheats on" when my late-game fun is rebuilding an entire settlement and setting it up as a "survivor township," but, I digress.

I like seeing the progression but I don't care for the rebuttal to things like "Why can't I craft curved arches anymore?" "Why haven't I been able to build a road since A17?" with "Get a mod for it." as though it were the end-all-be-all for every problem.  I also have an immense disdain for farm plots as a mechanic.

Don't take my criticisms as a disliking of the game; I wouldn't be playing if I disliked it, I'm trying to articulate that I care more about the world-building aspect of the game than the zombie aspect and I hate to see features of that disappear as the alphas progress and that has me worried about the overall path of the game itself.  To me, the zombies are incidental and add to it as a challenge; but, as the number of different types of them have increased the buildable blocks have decreased.  I guess I'd say that it's like an ice cream sundae and, when I used to have three scoops of ice cream topped with whipped cream and cherries it's shifted to a scoop and a half of ice cream and significantly more whipped cream and cherries.

 

[Dracula]

I'll add that I replied in this thread:



Because this was my single biggest gripe about A18 and to see it's still broke in 19 was disappointing.

Two of my posts got merged when it was moved and declared "not a bug" with everything after :

"I have the same problem on the Voluya Territory map; I'm trying to replace gravel with forest floor and, while it harvests as clay, it does not render as the grass/forest texture."

[SIZE=15.68px]Is me @%$*#!ing about it being relocated; to put it into perspective, getting the terrain to change is literally the most important thing to me in the development of the game.[/SIZE]

 

[Roland]

@Dracula I see what your frustration stems from now and I can sympathize with you. The developers have chosen a technology that has some benefits that are important to them but some limitations which damage your enjoyment of the game. I hope that those limitations will be able to be overcome at some point. It isn't that they don't care, it is that currently what you want is not possible.

The reason it was possible in A17 and before was that they used a different tech to render the world and that tech had benefits but also weaknesses. 

BTW...that "thread" is actually the Bug Pool and your tone and accusations are completely inappropriate for that venue. Just some friendly advice that you will go a lot further in getting what you want by not mistreating the people who have a hope of giving it to you. There is really no tolerance for rants there and the QA guys aren't going to get into big discussions over game philosophy with you and why which tech is the one the developers should have gone with. They just want to collect bugs, reproduce them, and create tickets for the programmers. That's it. They didn't sign up to be customer service reps who will smile and nod at people doing the angry customer routine.

If you really want to know why grass can be placed on top of destroyed stone and remain grass but turns into sand if placed next to other sand then ask faatal in the dev diary.

 

[Noctoras]

that is fair. im just worried. this most recent change isnt gona fly well with many players who enjoy the game. the verity of loot from the get go was something people liked, helped make each palythrough very different. not every game would you end up with a steel tool from the get go, hell, even a iron one. now the chance is slim to none with only stone crap being stored in @%$*#!ing gun safes. ruins the immersion too. 

We just completely quit doing safes and stuff, it's simply pointless early on. As game progresses, we will change that. 

But opening safes if you KNOW that there is only stone stuff? Nah. If better stuff was super rare early on, I would be happy, finding it would be a jackpot and a story to tell. now it's just about finding copy paste material. I like the progression system, but I dislike its implementation. 

Random fun seems to be thrown out of the window. Random World Gen without a random factor. Random loot which is zero random. Just like ... level 1, 2, 3 ... 

It isn't a bad idea. One flaw though is that potentially a stealth player could go non-cheesingly through the poi with very few kills and be punished for that. One idea the devs are considering at the moment is one (or more?) keys you find on random zombies or in random locations in the POI, which sounds at least for the stealth player to be a somewhat better solution.

That's switching from a pure level grind to a zed grind. The randomness, good and bad lucks also makes or made up for part of the games charme. Not advocating a rain of blue and purple gear early on, but at least some randomnes..... blue items spawning with 0.005% probability in stone age, 5% in late game for instance ... level gated, but still funny randomness

 

[Liesel Weppen]

Perhaps that's a different in mods relative to play styles; I found a lot more mods that were suited for what I wanted in previous versions versus A18.

Saying there are "less mods" is completely different from saying "there are less mods THAT FIT MY PERSONAL STYLE".

but having a mob of 100 waiting for me outside of it after I used the forge to build a few rebar frames is a terrifying experience.  I've had to use varying mods that allow a great degree of zombie health customization to get exactly what I want; it's not easy, but it's very satisfying to do so.

I somehow also dislike the bloodmoon and think there should be other threats, depending on what the player does, not just strict every 7th day. Or even random but still not related to what the player does.

What I'm getting at is that I hate that if I comment on a feature or how a change disrupts my play style; like the shift from the craftable blocks in A17 to A18 where the only way to get a variety of blocks was to cheat them in, then the response I get is to "get a mod that lets you craft all blocks or play with cheats on" when my late-game fun is rebuilding an entire settlement and setting it up as a "survivor township," but, I digress.

I also agree in theory. But the point is, the game is not neccessarily going where you in person want it to go. Especially not vanilla. On the other hand just always "use a mod" shouldn't be the answer. There should be some balance in vanilla also, but it still may not be the way you prefer. There are thousands of opinions what should be changed in vanilla, not just yours. And that also collides with dozens of different playstyles. When it comes to what one person wants to be changed, most people develop a tunnel view on how they personally play and totally ignore how that affects people who want to play different. It's completely impossible to fit all playstyles.

So as an example when it comes to vultures and cops i completely disagree with your opinion. If they where removed in vanilla, the game becomes completely boring.

They are part of vanilla, you can mod them out easily, but i could not mod them in easily if they wouldn't be part of vanilla.

I'm trying to articulate that I care more about the world-building aspect of the game than the zombie aspect 

And i almost completely ignore the whole building aspect. But you are right, just because i'm not using it, it doesn't bother me if some kind of blocks are craftable or not. So i have no problem if those blocks become craftable (again). I also don't understand why some blocks are not craftable, and i'm fine if you get them craftable again.

 

[Dracula]

If you really want to know why grass can be placed on top of destroyed stone and remain grass but turns into sand if placed next to other sand then ask faatal in the dev diary.

I've asked and a few other places; it was actually my desire to figure out WHY this happens that caused me to join this forum despite that I've been playing since around alpha 6; whatever the one was where you'd find rockets in gun safes.

When I bought the game, it was billed as "Like Minecraft, but with physics" in a review.  I've loved watching it develop and intend to keep doing so.  I realize that my particular brand of autism doesn't appeal to everyone and that what is a core mechanic to me may go unnoticed to thousands.

I've asked about it here before, but got no answers to in that were specific.  The last answer I got about it was "It'll be fixed in a future update" back when A18 first came out and I've been unable to find a mod or create one myself that fixes it.

 

[meganoth]

We just completely quit doing safes and stuff, it's simply pointless early on. As game progresses, we will change that. 

But opening safes if you KNOW that there is only stone stuff? Nah. If better stuff was super rare early on, I would be happy, finding it would be a jackpot and a story to tell. now it's just about finding copy paste material. I like the progression system, but I dislike its implementation. 

Random fun seems to be thrown out of the window. Random World Gen without a random factor. Random loot which is zero random. Just like ... level 1, 2, 3 ... 

That's switching from a pure level grind to a zed grind. The randomness, good and bad lucks also makes or made up for part of the games charme. Not advocating a rain of blue and purple gear early on, but at least some randomnes..... blue items spawning with 0.005% probability in stone age, 5% in late game for instance ... level gated, but still funny randomness

I'm not sure whether safes are worth it in the stone age, definitely not worth to use a stone axe, I open them only when I have lockpicks.

But I can say that in my game the brownish chests in the loot room of many pois still have a lot of stuff I want: For example mods or armor of all kind. In my current SP game I don't have points left in the first week to boost both my weapon perks and build a quality 5 stone age melee and ranged weapon and if I don't go strength or agility my ranged weapon will only get better if I find it in loot (or get them as quest rewards).

We get higher quality stone stuff relatively fast which means you potentially have a use for up to 4 mods for 5 armor pieces, one gun, one melee and up to 3 tools, all together 40 mods.

There are also schematics you want to find, some make sense in a gun safe.

But in general yes, I agree, there should be a very slim chance for better loot.

 

[Roland]

I've asked and a few other places; it was actually my desire to figure out WHY this happens that caused me to join this forum despite that I've been playing since around alpha 6; whatever the one was where you'd find rockets in gun safes.

When I bought the game, it was billed as "Like Minecraft, but with physics" in a review.  I've loved watching it develop and intend to keep doing so.  I realize that my particular brand of autism doesn't appeal to everyone and that what is a core mechanic to me may go unnoticed to thousands.

I've asked about it here before, but got no answers to in that were specific.  The last answer I got about it was "It'll be fixed in a future update" back when A18 first came out and I've been unable to find a mod or create one myself that fixes it.

I can tell you that the reason you haven't been answered is because they don't know. They HOPE to be able to fix it but the problem is that it is a limitation of the technology they are using. It is not their intention to stifle the creativity of builders but it might be something they end up being willing to sacrifice if there are other benefits that are too good to pass up on. It does suck when it is a limitation of technology that prevents the developer from doing what we want them to do. All we can do is wait and hope that things change. Just as WE wait for game patches, the developers wait for patches to their engine and tools.